After a pause for mischievous effect Manchester's two-time world boxing champion put us out of our suspense: "I've got longer arms."

Was this a joke?

"No. I've got longer arms for this fight."

Explain, please.

Hatton held out the fists with which he intends to relieve Colombia's Juan Urango of the world light-welterweight title here tomorrow night, thereby demonstrating his inability to straighten his arms fully.

"See. The elbows will only unbend this far. But I've been working on it with one of my trainers and it's better than it has been for ages."

Not for nothing is he known as the Hitman but all that hammer punching down his long and busy career has calcified those joints. Now repetitive manipulation is unlocking them, fraction by fraction.

He says: "We worked out that because of my elbows my reach had shortened by about two inches over the last seven years."

So physiotherapist Stuart Cosgrove goes to work on him every day, twisting, pulling and stretching the arms which hold the key to Hatton's fortune.

"It hurts," says Hatton. "It's going through the pain barrier every time. But it's worth it. I feel looser throwing my punches and although an inch or so may not sound much I can reach the target that bit more easily when I box on the outside."

Hatton's fame has been built on his short punching at close quarters, especially to the body, so the cramping of his elbows has not been a significant handicap in most of his 41 fights.

But as he matures, he is seeking to expand the range of his boxing skills to help him cope with the rising quality of his opponents at world championship level.

The timing of this disclosure of his little secret is partly to scotch speculation that he is going into this challenge for the IBF light-welterweight title wounded.

He says: "People have seen us in the gym working on my arms and they thought there must be something wrong with my hands or wrists. But I'm not injured."

He also wants to get the message out to Urango that the extending of his reach will make him even more dangerous.

Since the Colombian, like himself, has a reputation for going forward to fight at close quarters, Hatton is hoping to confuse the champion by doing some of his work at long range.

That makes sense, since Urango is the archetypal hungry fighter. He started building his muscular physique as a boy, he and his identical twin brother using their bare hands to dig sand out of the river bed in his home town of Monteria for their father to sell.

Now 26, he started boxing at the age of 10 and enjoyed a long and successful amateur career before turning professional only four and a half years ago.

A draw is the only blemish on his 18-bout record but his personal reputation was damaged by allegations that, when he moved to Spain for four fights in a year, he was fleeing maintenance payments for the six children he fathered with his first wife and another woman.

He denies neglect and since settling in Florida with his new wife Elizabeth and her son and daughter, he makes regular trips to Colombia to oversee the upkeep and education of his own children.

The financial strain of doing that will be eased by the $500,000 he is being paid to put his title on the line against Hatton in the hotel Paris Las Vegas.

He explains: "This is seven or eight times more than my highest previous purse."

Urango is a southpaw and he might have made a lot more had he persisted with his first sporting love, baseball.

Left-handed pitchers are like gold-dust in America and so ambidextrous is he that he says: "I pitched with either hand in the kids' league in Colombia."

Hatton - as the house fighter for the HBO cable TV network who are bankrolling his attempt to regain the supremacy at 10 stone which he achieved with his landmark triumph over Russo-Australian legend Kostya Tszyu in 2005 - is guaranteed $2 million.

He will be heading for an even bigger pay-day this summer if he dethrones Urango tomorrow night and his prospective mega-fight opponent, the highly rated but weight-troubled Mexican Jose Luis Castillo, defeats Cameroon's Hermann Ngoudjo in the main supporting bout on this Fight Academy promotion.

In his delight at topping the bill here in the boxing capital of the world - and with his arms lengthening by the fight - it appears now that nothing is beyond the Hitman's reach.